Kate Bowler

📖 4X New York Times bestseller
🍎 @DukeUniversity
🎙 Everything Happens

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

For all of your beautiful, terrible days (and all the ones in-between).

HAVE A BEAUTIFUL, TERRIBLE DAY! is available everywhere books are sold: https://t.co/kAUnalYOXU

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

Dr. @kenjeong bringing a lot of medical support and Duke pride to the FINAL FOUR. 💙😈

[CBS Sports @CBSSports]

Ken Jeong in the HOUSE

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

I will never be mad about a conversation with Rainn Wilson.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

Thinking about plausible horror movie titles. Please someone make:

"The Extroverted Massage Therapist"

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

When your favourite person writes an about-to-be-favourite book....

[ANNE LAMOTT @ANNELAMOTT]

I’m starting to get excited about the publication of Somehow. It’s out the day before my 70th birthday (Wait—that CAN’T be right.) It’s pretty much everything I know about anything, and that leads straight to love. You can preorder/learn more here: https://t.co/C84Y5bYUmI

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

A Blessing for Palm Sunday

Jesus, from that mountain
high among the olive trees,
it would have been an easy walk
down to the city,
to Jerusalem, which lay below.

So why choose to make your way
on a donkey,
on an everyday beast of burden,
your feet almost dragging on the ground?
And who are these people running, bending low,
to spread their precious cloaks
on the road before you,
waving palm branches and shouting,
“Save us! Hosanna to the Son of David!”?
What is the raw and urgent hope that rises in their songs?
“Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord!”
And, Jesus, why are you smiling?

Because it is true what they are saying,
though they can’t yet know the whole of it.
It is happening. It is unfolding
in slow motion,
the fulfillment of that promise from of old:
their savior would come,
humble, and riding on a donkey.

Blessed are we, on this side of history
shouting, “Come, Lord, save us too!”
We know how it ends, and still we forget
to rush toward our humble,
forgettable king
and yell, “Hosanna, hosanna,
our hope is in you!”

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

The first time I was on GMA I got my heel stuck in the chair.
The second time I stood up suddenly because Snooki came in and I got overwhelmed.
But the third time? WELL WELL WELL.

Wait until the end to see the absurdly cute thing they did. @ABCGMA3 made me SO VERY HAPPY. And thank you to @evapilgrim and @DeMarcoReports for being perfect and funny and kind. (My favorite quote from Demarco: “At first I was like “SAY WHAT?!”)

And thank you to Ken Penner, my father-in-law, for being willing to embarrass himself on behalf of hope.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

For living without control

God, I come to you as I am.
It is all I have, really.
And the next one I’m conscious of
will be the same.
I can feel the way I move,
moment to moment,
without the comfort of “solutions.”

It seems wild to me now
how I imagined any
once-and-for-all cure for this,
or a master plan to ensure
things will work out.
But, truth be told,
that’s always been
my secret hope.

So, Lord, let’s try again.
I’m begging for a new plan.
I want a plan that is an “unplan.”
I must keep moving and planning,
trying and changing,
knitting my days together even
as they unravel.
So can we do this together?

Remind me to pray: come Lord
and quiet the worry.
I step, and you steady me.
I give, and you keep my hands open.
I act, and you fortify me with courage
to try and try and try again.

This life is uncertain, Lord,
but your love is not.
You tell the story of my life
regardless of how little I know
about how it ends, except to say,
you were there since the beginning
and you appear on every page.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

These are uncertain times for so many of us. But, according to writer Maggie Jackson (@Maggie8Jackson), perhaps there is deep wisdom to be uncovered—surprising gifts of curiosity, creative thinking, open-mindedness, and ways forward through the (often) unpredictabilities of life.

Listen to (or watch!) our full conversation:
🎧: https://t.co/UBZVAy69Ji
👀: https://t.co/H7u271yxOY

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

We don’t usually have repeat guests on this podcast… except I’m making an exception for the wonderful and wise @TheAlanAlda.

Alan Alda, of course, is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and podcast host of Clear and Vivid. You probably know and love him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H or Senator Arnie Vinick on The West Wing.

He is endlessly curious on just about every topic, which makes him the perfect person to talk to about empathy, learning across differences (and disagreements), and how to age into new hobbies and careers.

Listen to (or watch!) our full conversation:
👀: https://t.co/x1ghT9FfIS
🎧: https://t.co/LiiQimV34M

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

@andrea_tisher I have been and it is GLORIOUS

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

A Blessing for When You Don’t Feel Fulfilled Anymore

God, I will wake up today and move,
numbly, into each new hour.

I will fill my lungs with the air
of an undone, unfinished,
never-before-seen day,
entirely certain of how I will feel
when it ends:
tired.
bored.
unchanged.

God, even my best efforts—
my sacrificial love, my diligent work—
don’t stir up anything
like the rush of accomplishment.
Whatever felt like meaning
isn’t meaningful anymore.
At least not today.

One minute, I want to change everything.
And the next I want to crawl back into bed.
(But, if I’m honest, how much of my actual
day-to-day life could I change,
even if I wanted to?)

Lord, this is the simplest prayer:
make it matter again.
Color my grayscale vision
with every shade of meaning.
Blues and purples and lilacs for purpose.
Reds and pinks for every kind of love.
Yellows for insights and ideas that sparkle.

And if once-cherished dreams need to fade,
let them fade.
Let me not imagine
that each one of my plans
must glue my future together.

Surprise me.
(I regret saying that already.)
But let me come alive to the wonder
of this day.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

A Blessing for Honest Faith

God, I am disappointed and embarrassed
at what people get up to
in the name of religion.

My heart is thirsty for a faith I can trust.
And I mean that.
I don’t trust the cultural scripts
that turn religion into any game
where somebody wins
and somebody loses,
and there is the strong scent
of the entrepreneur.
Somebody is selling something.

And from the recesses of my mind
from some very early encounter,
I think I must have met the real you, God.
That somehow I met goodness so pure
it settled my heart to understand
trustworthiness of a majesty and stature
that thereafter I could accept
no counterfeits.

God, come and show yourself again.
Show me faith that cannot be faked.

Let me see you in the loveliness of others
living out their faith so genuinely,
so honestly,
that you shine through.

And if I can’t get all the theology right,
let me not worry too long.
I suspect you’d rather I live honestly
by the light of what I know to do
that looks most like you,
and keep quiet about the rest.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW!

How do you have a faith that can hold all of reality—the beautiful, the terrible, and everything in-between? The TODAY Show’s @SavannahGuthrie thinks carefully about this question, especially given that her job is reporting the news every morning.

Listen here: https://t.co/4duHCOb6P0

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

A blessing for if you've had a painful childhood

Blessed are you who come with your sorrow, allowing your pain to convey all its truth.

Here is where grief is understood at its core, where the dark shadow of betrayal is seen from the inside.

Here, my dear, is where the work of healing begins.

Blessed are you who mourn as you meet yourself once again, as a little child who needed protection but did not receive it, who deserved respect but was not afforded it.

The things that should have happened but didn’t and the thing that happened but shouldn’t.

The broken family systems and normalized cruelties that allowed your pain to continue far beyond what it should have.

For you have come back now to the God who is alive, to your past, your present, and to your future, who has already moved heaven and earth to restore your dignity and return you to yourself.

And P.S. Take a minute to remind your past self that you are loved now. Tomorrow and forever. And rest. You are safe. You are loved. You are held.

Hey! You’re doing Lent you’re in luck! NO SPIRITUAL HOMEWORK TODAY. TAKE A BREAK LOVIE!

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW!!

Academy Award-winning director @realsarahpolley describes what it was like to not be believed. And how, as adults, we can all better protect those around us and look back on our younger selves with compassion.

Listen now: https://t.co/Xbu4QCBfgE

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW

I talked with the wonder and the marvelous queen of tragicomedy @wittelstephanie. And isn’t tragicomedy all of life? The absurdity. The horror. The laughter that somehow cuts through the most difficult of moments.

Stephanie has so much to teach us about how to let the worst days and the last days still have meaning. Listen to our full conversation through the link below or wherever you listen to podcasts. (Shoutout to @lemonadamedia!)

🔗: https://t.co/DMwRFCuOrn

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

New Episode Out Now!

A basketball coach, a doctor, and a history professor walk into a bar….This might be the start of a great joke OR the start of an episode of Everything Happens.

This conversation was a special one. My friends @Surgeon_General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Duke Men’s Basketball Coach @JonScheyer joined me for a conversation taped in person at @DukeU. Together, we discuss the loneliness that is ailing us and how we might begin to feel a little more connected to each other.

Listen here: https://t.co/hMc8QjyJDn

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

A Blessing For Not Your Best Self
(From Have A Beautiful, Terrible Day!)

God, I can’t tell
which person
I will be today:
kind and loving,
turn-the-other-cheek
and I’ll-be-right-here,
soft but strong.
I will keep no record of wrongs.

I might be someone else entirely:
brittle and judgmental,
I’m-taking-my-share and
you-deal-with-it-alone,
hard but weak.
I will keep every record, dammit.

I am an accountant in this world
that does not give me what I’m owed.

God, these multiple selves, you know
(of course you know) are parts of a whole.

You send the love I have to give.
You grieve the pain that
causes me to withhold.
You send your spirit every day
not to stitch us back together
but to heal every tender part
from the inside out.

So, in the meantime,
bless this generous self,
bless this breakable self,
bless these many parts and
make them whole.

[Kate Bowler @KatecBowler]

We are kicking off Season 12 of the Everything Happens Podcast (!!) with my friend, Bob Crawford, someone who knows too well how terrible and beautiful life can be.

Listen to EVERYTHING HAPPENS wherever you get your podcasts: https://t.co/Xs1wZfgZ6J